The New Murrey and Blue blog

What colour were Richard’s carrots….?

And now for something completely different . . . as Monty Python once said.

The humble carrot may not be of riveting interest to many, but its history is fascinating and very well recorded. In my writing research I had sudden cause to wonder if carrots had always been “orange”. I wanted to write about someone ‘having hair that would rival a carrot’, which was fine until I read a claim that carrots used to be solely purple! Purple hair? Argh!

So, was Richard served purple carrots? I began to delve, and came upon the following fascinating site: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history2.html Everything you could possibly want to know about one of our most common vegetables. I think Richard’s carrots were orange, just not to EU standards.

Now to see if the turnip has a site of its own as well . . . .

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10 responses to “What colour were Richard’s carrots….?”

jrlarner

May 21, 2015 at 12:51 pm

I love one of the old names for carrot – ‘clapwype’!

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1. viscountessw
  
  May 21, 2015 at 1:42 pm
  
  Clapwype sounds absolutely disgusting…and I’m having carrots tonight…
  
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mairemartello

May 21, 2015 at 1:35 pm

Heirloom carrots have become a rage in the USA. Purple and red and yellow make the old-school orange seem quite bland! I’m sure Richard’s diet was much more colorful and spicy than most of today’s food.

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viscountessw

May 21, 2015 at 1:45 pm

I’m afraid I’m a little staid. If it’s a carrot, I want it orange. Mind you, I’m sure Richard could persuade me to sample more exotic things!

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1. Julia Stambor
  
  May 21, 2015 at 3:24 pm
  
  Actually, if Wikipedia is right, the word “carrot” wasn’t introduced into English until 1530, so Richard would probably have called them “more” which was a blanket word for what we call carrots or parsnips (related to the German “Möhre”). Perhaps you should re-compare your character’s hair colour to something else 😉
  
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mairemartello

May 21, 2015 at 3:40 pm

“I would like more more, please.” Has anyone heard that carrots have no effect on the human eye?

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1. viscountessw
  
  May 21, 2015 at 4:32 pm
  
  I guess I’ll have to go for Middle French, Julia – carotte – which could be anything from about 1340 to 1611. So if I go for middle-ish Middle French, I may be OK?
  
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2. viscountessw
  
  May 21, 2015 at 4:33 pm
  
  I have to say, mairemartello, that my cat doesn’t eat them and she can see in the dark! I do, and I can’t. Must be a moral there somewhere.
  
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halfwit36

May 21, 2015 at 9:47 pm

Cats can’t really see in the dark, My Lady, but they need less light than we do.
But I think you could train your cat to eat carrots. We once had a cat who loved corn, in any form – creamed, on the cob, etc.
Well, you can train a cat – but it might take more lifetimes than you have at your disposal!

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1. Jan Garner
  
  May 22, 2015 at 3:42 am
  
  One of our Siamese cats – who was hardly a fussy eater – always worked around any carrot she found in the left-over stew we occasionally fed her, and left it neatly on the side of her dish!
  
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